Monday, August 19, 2013

Behold the bacon donut. Imagine sinking your teeth into a fluffy donut, soft as a pillow, glazed with maple syrup icing and laden with strips of the crispiest bacon... that there is the Flying Pig donut from Gourdough's food truck in Austin, Texas.

Gourdough's food truck

We'djust finished eating the fattylicious smoked brisket from La Barbecue when we spied the vintage Airstream trailer that is home to Gourdough's. We'd been complaining about being stupidly full from barbecue, but it's amazing what the promise of bacon doughnuts can do to initiate an emergency stomach.

Gourdough's Big Fat Donut menu

Gourdough's had been on our Austin hit-list from the start, combining two parts excess with three parts humour. Who couldn't love a place that offered donut combinations like Son of a Peach (peach filling, cinnamon, sugar and cake mix topping) or Blue Balls (blueberry filling with blue icing).

Lining up for donuts

I don't even want to know how hot it would have been in that trailer frying donuts on a 35C day, but our server is unbelievably warm and chirpy. The notion of Southern hospitality does exist - it's like everyone really does love their job and want nothing more than to make sure y'all have a nice day!

Mother Clucker fried chicken strip with maple syrup butter US$5.50

We order the Mother Clucker, a crumbed and deep-fried chicken fillet served on top of a donut with a side of maple syrup butter. It's protein city here, and although some of the pieces are a little dry, a good dunk on the maple syrup butter fixes that.

Flying Pig donut with bacon and maple syrup icing US$5.50

The Flying Pig donut has us all grinning from ear to ear. The smoky crisp bacon is an unbeatable counterpart to the soft fluffy donut - and that bacon was the best we'd eat all trip.

Pop tea US$3.50

And what's a Pop Tea? We're delighted to find it's an ice block served submerged in a cup of iced tea. perfect for catching all those ice block drips. Eat the ice block first, or let it melt into your drink when you get brain freeze. You choose!

We swing by Hoover's for some Southern-style cooking, lured by claims they offer some of the best chicken fried steak in the USA. The dining room is smart but casual with booth seating and tables. The menu includes everything from barbecue to po' boys to Southern fried pork chops, and you can upsize every meal (Hoover size) for a couple of bucks.

What's a chicken fried steak? It's a tenderised steak that is crumbed and deep-fried steak, similar in preparation to schnitzel. In Texas it's usually served with peppered white gravy over the top, and you know what? It's actually pretty delicious.

Red, white and bleu burger with candied yams US$7.99Suze orders the red, white and bleu burger, made up of a half-pound smoked hamburger with Aus-Tex wing sauce (red), Monterey Jack cheese (white) and bleu cheese (blue), with requisite lettuce and tomato on a sweet kolache bun. Kolache buns came from Czech immigrants when they arrived in Texas in the 19th century and are now hugely popular across the state.

I order the char-broiled catfish and together we feast on sides of black eyed peas, mustard greens, fried okra (oh so crunchy!), sweet candied yams, macaroni and cheese, creamed spinach and cowboy beans studded with bacon.

Pecan pie a la mode US$5.44

Desserts are listed on the blackboard but we can't go past the pecan pie a la mode.

Peach cobbler a la mode US$5.44

And we order peach cobbler too, a wedge of pie filled with tinned peaches.

If you're a fan of Top Chef like I am, you know all about Whole Foods. It's where contestants are always filmed shopping for challenges, especially as they hurtle themselves towards the entrance pushing trolleys.

Local Texas peaches

What I hadn't realised until I started researching for our trip, was that Whole Foods started in Austin, Texas, opening its first store in 1978, then known as SaferWay (a play on Safeway). In 1980 the first Whole Foods Market opened.

Donut nectarines - these were unbelievably sweet

The Lamar outlet in downtown Austin is the flagship store for Whole Foods, boasting a massive 7,400 square metre supermarket.

Hen in the Woods mushrooms and fresh morels

Supermarkets are awesome wherever you are, but we were particularly struck by the neatness and organisation of the entire store. Stock merchandising, most notable in the fresh produce area, was mesmerising, with every fruit and vegetable stacked tidily but in such a way as to suggest freshness and abundance. There are also clever cross-category promotions, like putting tubs of fresh whipped cream next to the strawberries.

Arctic Char - Top Chef challenge anyone?

Prices aren't terribly cheap - for a long time Whole Foods battled a "Whole Foods, Whole Pay Check" moniker - but we marvelled at the range of products, in particular the items we don't see on our shelves like fresh morels, ostrich eggs and Arctic Char.

Raw and sprouted cereals

The bulk section, where you can buy as much or as little as you need with minimal packaging, is also staggering.

Bulk sweeteners and oils

Mid-shop snackage? Yes, please

But what gobsmacked us most was the presence of in-store dining. Getting hunger pains while doing the grocery shopping? Just park your trolley and pull up a chair at one of several food-court style dining stalls.

Seafood and wine

You could have seared salmon at 5th Street Seafood, summer citrus quinoa salad at Good Greens or a stack of ribs at Bowie BBQ.

Beer and wine bar

And then there's the beer and wine bar!

I'm so intrigued by the creation of 'hanging out at the supermarket' as a new social norm, by adding on drinks or a casual meal to your grocery shopping.

Self-serve salad bar

The pre-prepared food section is also phenomenal, taking up about a quarter of the store.

Salad rainbow!

There are half-a-dozen self-serve food bars, including raw salads, vegetarian sections and cooked meats. There's even a self-serve cookie bar in the bakery section!

Wood-fired pizza oven

You can get a freshly made wood-fired pizza, order a fresh burger and shake (Suze got an Elvis milkshake with peanut butter, banana and fried bacon and it was amazing!), pick up sushi, tacos and everything else in-between.

Everyone's favourite aisle!

But our favourite aisle had to be this one: hummus, cookies and chocolate. What more could you want?

Post-checkout dining area

A huge post-checkout dining area allows shopper to eat any purchases straight away. They have condiment stands with all kinds of sauce (soy, chilli, tomato, mustards etc) plus cutlery, serviettes and water.

Free fruit for Kids Club members

And I was also impressed by the generosity of this healthy eating incentive - free fruit for kids!

Gargantuan freeways

Driving around Austin involved some pretty spectacular freeway flyovers. There is so much car traffic in the USA it's incredible.

Bike-friendly buses!

But I was enamoured with the buses here, fitted with biker carriers at the front. We also spotted these in LA.

Our last meal in Austin was all about biscuits. We call them scones, but in the South, they're known as biscuits, eaten as part of a savoury meal and usually smothered in gravy.

Biscuits + Groovy trailer

Biscuits + Groovy initially opened in 2010 as a vegan/vegetarian truck (Jon Lach, the owner is vegan) but has since expanded the menu to include meat items. The trailer is notoriously busy on weekends, with queues stretching around the block.

24 Comments:

You know what? I haven't missed wheat until I saw this post. You're evil! I must come up with a gluten-free version of that bacon donut. And those Southern biscuits piled up with messy goodness. Thanks for the Whole Food photos, I've been curious for a long while.

Oh my God! Is it bad that I want that bacon donut right now?! HAHA yes, the bike racks on the buses. I rode around in SF and got the bus driver to help me load the bike on because I didn't know how! OMG Sooooo embarassing!

Whole Foods looks very epic, they need to bring it to Oz, like they did with Costco :)

Oh, I remember my first introduction to biscuits and gravy... I was a young uni student, in Alaska, and at the breakfast buffet in the hotel, wondered what the hell the white gravy was... I shied away from it, thinking it was disgusting. Those were the days where I had no sense of adventure about my food - what a wasted opportunity!!

Wowsers. I saw a bacon donut a few weeks ago somewhere in Brooklyn and never bothered to get it because I was already full. Not that it looked anything like the gorgeous one you ate. Pity we won't be making it to Austin on this trip!

I always like dropping by Whole Foods for a sticky beak. How organised is the checkout system!

It's brekkie time here in NY and for some reason I'm craving donuts. Hmmm

My beloved was visiting family in Houston and he has been playing a food blogger snapping pictures of what he ate there to show me and I am so jealous! Let's just say there has been discussion on a potential trip to Texas next year just for the food. I am really interested trying the crispy okra and I have been dreaming of shopping in Whole Foods.